The Dominican Republic, which occupies the eastern two-thirds of the island of Hispaniola, holds a presidential election on Friday, May 16, 2008. The president of the Dominican Republic, who is directly elected by universal suffrage for a term of four years, is chosen by the runoff voting system. If none of the seven presidential candidates obtains an absolute majority in today's first round of voting, a runoff election will take place in forty-five days between the two candidates with the largest number of votes, and the candidate that obtains a majority of valid votes shall be deemed elected.

2008 presidential election results, issued by the Central Electoral Board (JCE), are available here, and also at the bottom of this posting, under Update.

Since declaring its independence from Spain in 1821 until 1966, the Caribbean country had a turbulent history, characterized by numerous military coups, foreign invasions and ruthless dictatorships, among them that of Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina, who ruled the Dominican Republic from 1930 until his assassination in 1961, in what was one of Latin America's - and the world's - most totalitarian regimes. A succession of constitutional regimes have ruled the country since 1966, although elections held before 1996 were not always transparent affairs.

For twenty-two of the thirty years between 1966 to 1996, Joaquín Balaguer and his conservative Social Christian Reform Party (PRSC; originally the Reform Party) held power. Balaguer, who had been the Dominican Republic's nominal president from 1960 to 1961 (under Trujillo's dictatorship), ruled the country in an authoritarian fashion from 1966 until 1978, when the social democratic-oriented Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD) defeated the Reform Party. There was an attempt to interfere with the vote count, but pressure from the U.S. and its then-President Jimmy Carter forced Balaguer to acknowledge the opposition's victory.

PRD prevailed once more in the 1982 general election, but in 1986 Balaguer and PRSC returned to power by a narrow margin in a free and fair election, defeating both PRD as well as the Dominican Liberation Party (PLD), originally a leftist PRD offshoot established by writer and former PRD leader Juan Bosch - the Dominican Republic's first democratically chosen president (elected in 1962 but overthrown the following year). PLD grew exponentially after 1978, and in the 1990 general election it outpolled PRD, which slipped to third place. Nonetheless, Balaguer's PRSC won a close victory over PLD, which suffered a debilitating split two years later.

By 1993 it appeared very likely that PRD would return to power in 1994 under the leadership of José Francisco Peña Gómez. However, Peña Gómez lost by a narrow margin to Balaguer in an election plagued by irregularities; it was subsequently found out that the electoral registry had been fraudulently altered to exclude hundreds of thousands of PRD-affiliated voters. Nonetheless, Balaguer was sworn in as president, although shortly afterwards he reached an agreement with Peña Gómez to hold an early presidential election in 1995. However, Balaguer went on to form an alliance with PLD to secure a two-year term, and the early vote was postponed until 1996.

The 1996 presidential election was held under a comprehensive electoral reform, which barred the immediate re-election of the president and established the runoff voting system. In the first round of voting, Peña Gómez won the largest number of votes but failed to obtain an absolute majority, and consequently he went into a runoff election with PLD candidate Leonel Fernández Reyna, who had arrived in second place. However, PRSC, which had finished in a distant third place, formed an alliance with PLD, and as a result Leonel Fernández defeated Peña Gómez in the runoff vote. Nonetheless, after the election PRSC reached an agreement with PRD to secure control of Congress, where PLD was in the minority.

The Dominican economy grew strongly during Leonel Fernández' administration, but nonetheless PLD remained a minority in Congress following the 1998 legislative election, in which PRD prevailed by a large margin. Two years later, PRD regained the presidency under the leadership of Hipólito Mejía Domínguez, who secured a large lead over Danilo Medina of PLD and former President Joaquín Balaguer - who at the age of ninety-four was running for an eight presidential term as the candidate of PRSC. Although Mejía narrowly failed to attain an absolute majority, Balaguer acknowledged his victory; Medina subsequently conceded defeat, and there was no runoff election.

Mejía presided over a period of severe economic contraction, but PRD scored an unexpected victory in the 2002 legislative elections, and Mejía successfully sought to have the constitution amended to allow the president's immediate re-election once more. He subsequently secured (with great difficulty) PRD's presidential nomination in the 2004 election, but in the aftermath of a major banking crisis he was overwhelmingly defeated by former president and PLD nominee Leonel Fernández.

While the Dominican economy has achieved a remarkable recovery during Fernández' second term, a number of traditional ills persist, among them the poor quality of public services, governmental corruption, infrastructure deficiencies (notably pertaining to the electrical system), and the country's general underdevelopment. That said, in the 2006 legislative elections PLD obtained solid majorities in both houses of Congress, and opinion polls indicate Leonel Fernández will probably be re-elected in the 2008 presidential election's first round of voting, with a large majority over PRD's Miguel Vargas Maldonado, while PRSC nominee Amable Aristy Castro is trailing far behind, and the remaining candidates are mired at one percent or less.

Update

Dominican and Spanish news media reported on election night that an exit poll taken by Penn, Schoen & Berland forecast incumbent President Leonel Fernández Reyna would be re-elected in the first round with 56% of the vote. According to the poll, PRD nominee Miguel Vargas Maldonado obtained 39%, while PRSC's Amable Aristy Castro stood at just four percent, and the remaining four candidates won one percent of the vote between themselves.

These findings were subsequently confirmed by election results issued by the Central Electoral Board (JCE). With all polling places tallied, the results of the May 16, 2008 presidential election were as follows: